So the article was created back in February, but that's okay. I understand that pot can make one a little slow.

Now then. The article you posted really minimizes it, but does admit that he was selling seeds, by mail, to recipients in the US. If the DEA simply waited until such a time as they knew, for sure, they could easily prove he met the requirements for the highest tier of punishment? They're allowed to do that. Selling into the US was an idiotic move. Regardless of anyone's thoughts on whether the laws are just or not, he, of all people, knew what they were, and willfully broke them. He deserves whatever punishment he gets (from some searching around online, it looks like it probably will be five to eight years in a US prison, so the direness of the penalties can stop being conflated). Source for that sentence, and yeah it's Fox but it's an AP snippet, which is why I'm using it.

I think there are a hell of a lot of examples of the war on drugs being completely ridiculous. For example, arresting a mother of three because everyone in the family got a cold at the same time, and she ended up buying two boxes of cold meds in one week. Marc Emery, though, everything appears, even by Cannabis Culture's account, to be completely on the up-and-up. While pot is still illegal, imprisoning him is perfectly fine by me. Should it be legal? Probably, at least in some circumstances, but it's not yet.

Agreed. Whether you agree with the laws or not, if you choose to willfully disobey them then you choose to serve your sentence if you're caught. I don't completely agree with the illegalization of marijuana but I'll never smoke/grow/sell pot or marijuana seeds. And therefore, I will never be judicially punished for any of that.

I don't feel US law should have any jurisdiction over _me_ so this is rather weird

Thing is, this guy, even if he didn't physically enter the US, distributed marijuana seeds to locations in the US. In other words, he committed crimes in the United States, and the US naturally has jurisdiction over those crimes. Canada just happens to play nice with the US, and are not willing to let people who have committed crimes in the US avoid justice simply by hanging out on their side of the border.

If you, outside the US, were sending bombs through the mail into the US, would you think US law should have jurisdiction over you? Obviously the crimes themselves aren't really comparable, but the point is, it'd be completely reasonable for the US DoJ to want to punish you.

He committed crimes in America, he should be tried in America. That said, American law enforcement doesn't have any direct power over him while he's in Canada, that's why they needed the Canadian government to extradite him. By doing so, the Candadian government chooses to use its power to place him in the power of the American court system. If the Candadian government didn't want to let the Americans try him, they could always refuse to extradite him._________________"Whatever afflicts thee, their asses I shall kick"

Civil disobedience has a long and storied history in america.... Of course, they still went to jail.

The "War on drugs" is expensive, no end in sight and actually drives the economy of illegal narcotics quite a bit. Drugs wouldn't be near the money maker that they are if they weren't so blasted difficult to smuggle.

Add to this that we spend rather large amounts of money on aspects of this "war" that the general public isn't often aware of. We, for example, spend more money on eradicating wild marijauna plants than we do on eradicating marijauna farmers. I'm sure we'd spend more on the farmers if we caught more, but just the same. The way our ranking system of controlled substances works a lot of potenitally useful drugs are labled as having no medical use so further research is effectively halted or at least made very difficult.

I'm not a big fan of illegal drugs. I've had family members end up addicted to heroine among other things. It's pretty ugly stuff. Frankly, they would benefit more from medical help than prison where they can get an amazingly large number of illegal substances.

It's a complicated issue and while I don't have any big ideas on the perfect solution I know there's probably a better way to address it than we are._________________"Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid" ~ SGT John Stryker from "Sands of Iwo Jima".